


Second Dream

by Hagen



Category: Logan Lucky (2017), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, American History, Body Worship, Cabins, Cunnilingus, Doggy Style, Enemies to Lovers, Enthusiastic Consent, Explicit Consent, F/M, Fire, Forced Orgasm, Forest Sex, Fur, Gift Giving, Hunters & Hunting, Love Confessions, Missionary Position, Mountains, Multiple Orgasms, Nature, Oral Sex, Orgasm Control, Rough Sex, Running Away, Touch-Starved, Water Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-01-13 17:47:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21192878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hagen/pseuds/Hagen
Summary: When you flee an arranged marriage and a life of restriction and control, you find yourself saved from the winter wilds by a lone fur trapper.🌜Mountain man Clyde Logan/reader au🌛





	1. Talk About Suffering

**Author's Note:**

  * For [knekiken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knekiken/gifts).

> hi! I've written a few Clyde/Reader fics before, but this one has been germinating for a long time. 
> 
> The first chapter is purposely vague, but the next 9 will be 20% story exploration and 80& mountain man/rich brat raw dogging, so. Content warning, I guess?
> 
> [Second Dream playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5dR9QbeNti9d9haqqTzMAb?si=kXzgsWU9RtOkCLfxqn6J2w)

_Bad Clyde edits & aesthetic by yours truly_ 🍂

Sometimes, he wants to get off this mountain. He wants to take his horse and hobble her to his cart. He wants to stick his dog beside him, and he wants to go.

That’s only sometimes, though. Other times he breathes in and feels the white air lifting off the snow, and he thinks he might just stay.

\--------------------

You have, by firelight, read soft books in your chair at night; pretty printed books from the city, from the shops with shelves rising all the way up to the ceiling. You have read books about escaping - what a romantic thing it is! - and fleeing to some beautiful place - fragrant Paris, wild Dublin, dazzling Berlin.

You have not, in living memory, read books about fleeing into the white wastes of nothing, the bear-trodden jut of foul mountain. You have not read books about cold so bitter it purples the fingers. You have not read books about marriages so foul and so surely dreadful that the bride-to-be throws herself from her Papa's carriage with nothing but a satchelful of candies, a journal, and a winter coat for the sheltered city chills.

What a book it would be, you thought, running, and perhaps if you survived you would write it. For now, you simply ran.

You ran yourself into the deep of the white wood, further up the mountain, ignoring the fading calls behind you. You ran yourself into the snow, into exhaustion.

The trapper Clyde Logan found you when you were half-dead.

You were freezing in the hollow of a tree, and you thought, at first, that he was a bear. You were sure of nothing, mind addled by the chill, the snow, and you saw a great dark hulk before you. 

"Fucking Christ," you heard the bear say. "Jesus."

You were put into a cart and a dog was put beside you - a big dog, one that even in your near-death you could tell came close to one hundred pounds - that tried to lick you awake.

You were taken to a high, tall cabin on the flat of a slope, a clearing out beyond, the rest surrounding by ice-clad trees standing sentinel over it. You were put on a bed and covered in furs, hot from being hung by a fire. You had cloths, doused in hot water, laid across your chest, your shoulderblades. 

You aren't sure how, but you thawed, and when you wake from a strange and fevered dream of snow and ice, you are faced with a tall man the size of a buffalo, and you are filled with rage and fear both.

He tells you his name, and that he found you half-dead. He tells you there is a loft up above you, and that you're to sleep there once you wake properly. 

You discover, when you blink away the cloud of fevered sleep, that he only has one hand, and in place of the other is made of wood. He asks you how you ended up half-dead. He has a thick mountain drawl and a big nose and black eyes. 

"I ran away," you gripe. "I didn't want to get married."

"You're a rich girl, ain't you?" he asks, almost derisive. "People gon' coming lookin' for you."

"I don't know. I don't care. I shan't be going back with them - and I shan't be staying here, either."

"I reckon they already are." He fumbles in his pocket and pushes a crumple of paper at you. "This was nailed to a post in Boone. Is it about you?"

You knuckle your eyes. _ No no no no no. _ "What does it _ say?" _ you snap.

"I don't know," he says, a little defensively. "I ain't given to sittin' at home readin' all day."

You lower your hands. _ He can't read. _

"Fuck," you exclaim, when you read it. It _ is _about you; inked in a printers', offering $100 for your safe return. You cast it aside in horror and scramble up, making wildly for the door. Clyde Logan pulls you back.

“Don’t you dare - don’t you _ dare _!" you shriek.

"Will you _ stop _, by God-"

“You can’t keep me here,” you hear yourself say. “You can’t, I’ll have you hanged if you do.”

He twitches a little at the word _ hanged. _“Then go on back out there’n freeze yourself to death for all I care,” he snaps, and flings the door open so that you are both whipped by the icy wind, “I got enough to be doin’ without listenin’ to you whine in my goddamn ear all night.” 

Horrified and appalled and choiceless, you flee into the space you have been given, and sob. You hear him slam the wooden door shut and take off on the giant horse, and you wish so badly that this is all a frightful dream.

The dog is crying at the bottom of the ladder. When you are sure that Logan is gone, you go down to it. It's a great dark bear of a dog - you always heard the saying that dogs resemble their masters - with a wet nose and enormous paws. It snuffles all over you, whimpering, and you cry into the its neck until its fur is wet. 

You run away the next morning. 

He is asleep in that great bed, snoring, and the dog is curled at the foot of it. Your hands shake as you descend the latter. The dog looks at you and huffs, and when it tries to come out the door with you, you must push it back.

The sun is rising, orange on the snow, when you emerge. The horse is snuffling in her stall. This great coat is too big and smells of smoke. You tuck it tight about you and study the beast. 

She stares back at you. 

"Fuck you," you tell her. "Great ugly beast."

You run, again.

It takes twice as long to walk a mile in snow as it does on dry ground. You are weak from refusal to eat, and pulling mouthfuls of snow does not seem to help a bit. You wonder if you will die.

He finds you eventually. The sun is up, glancing hard off the snow and making you squint. You feel frozen solid. The horse is so bloody _ big _that you feel it thundering up behind you before you hear it, and when you try to run you hear an excited bark, and you are thrust headfirst into the snow by two eager paws.

"Jesus Christ, you fool dog, get off," you hear Clyde Logan growl, and the _ crunch _in the snow as he dismounts. The dog snuffles at your face until he is pushed aside, and when Clyde takes hold of you and pulls you up, you scream as hard and as loudly as you can, right in his ear.

"One thing you don't seem to realise," Clyde says, teeth gritted, when you have lost your breath, "is that snow leaves tracks, and you don't seem the type used to walkin' in snow this deep."

The dog jumps at you, excited. 

You snap at Clyde, "I hope they hang you, you ugly fat dirty beast. I hope they drag you through the streets and hang you."

"You can hope all you like." He slides off the mare. “Can you ride a horse?”

“Can _ you _?” you spit back, jerking your head at his wooden hand.

“You’re a goddamn pain. Can you ride or not?”

“Yes," you say tightly, "I can ride.”

He slaps the saddle of the white beast. “Get on up here then.”

You refuse. It’s a workhorse, not a horse to be ridden, and you aren’t a field wraith.

“Sweet Jesus. Ain’t nobody around to see you ride a fuckin’ workhorse. You'll be walking back otherwise."

"I don't care. I won't do it." 

He looks at you. You are shivering in the cold, and pull your stolen coat tighter about your neck. Clyde leans on the horse, bends, puts his face close to yours. 

“_ Get - on - the - horse, _” he snarls, enunciating every word in a manner not common to him.

You spit in his face. He grabs you bodily, and though you shriek, he puts you on the horse, and to your distaste gets on with you. You shiver violently still.

He opens his coat and shoves both lapels around you, so big they fit you almost entirely. Immediately you are appalled by his boldness, and by the insolence he possesses to put his body on yours. The coat served as a thick, woolly wall between you, three inches of winter hide, and now there is nothing but a cotton shirt and a woollen vest separating his belly from your back.

Clyde gives the horse a nudge, and she walks. To keep you on the horse, he puts one arm unceremoniously about your unbodiced middle, and the other fences you sharply against his belly as he holds the reins. He’s hot like a bison under the great coat, and the heat of his chest on your shoulders brings the shuddering to a stop.

The mare lurches under you both as he digs a heel slightly into her side, and she carries on against the tracks she left when she came. Chewie lopes alongside the horse, snuffling at snow, muzzle white with it.

“This is what’s gonna happen,” Clyde grunts, voice so close to your ear it’s nearly ticklish, “if you run away again. This, or you gon’ freeze to death, or a bear gon’ rip you to shreds, or a pack of wolves gon’ chase you down and eat you alive. I’ll let you pick which one you think is better.”

You squirm, but not uncomfortably. “I fucking hate you.”

“Yeah, well, go on and fuckin’ hate me some more. I got enough to be doin' without comin' out to drag you back every time you take a notion to run off out into the snow."

You are taken to town the next day on the condition that you keep hidden and do not run away.

The cart, full of fur baled and rolled, rocks and groans over the rough lay of the path. The dog, dressed in a new collar with a rope leash, lies on you for all two hours of the journey. The mountain path twists, and the forest is just black-white-green, looming above snowdrifts the height of a man. It is soft and quiet.

Home, and the bustling city, seem very far away.

The town bustles a little. Clyde pulls the horse up beside a row of others, some hobbled to carts and some simply saddled. He tells you, "You sit there, and don't move," and orders the dog to _ stay. _ He takes all of the bales out under his arms and goes down the cold and crowded street.

As soon as he is out of sight, you take the dog and you find a general store, stepping distastefully over the softer patches of mud, and from the walrus-moustached man at the counter you buy soap, a news-paper, sweets, jerky, bread, and a jar of jam screwed tight.

You sit on the cart and read the news-paper, pausing occasionally to allow the dog to slobber crumbled jerky out of your hand. "Disgusting," you tell him, and he pants up at you in delight. You let him lean on you even so. 

"I told you not to fuckin' move," Clyde Logan snaps, when he returns, fur-less.

"I don't care."

You have not eaten properly since thawing, and you won't eat what he gives you. Back in the cabin, Clyde loudly reprimands your sugary purchases, and tries to make you eat _ stew. _

You were not reared on these things. You are not accustomed to being called a brat, or spoilt, and so when he grizzles the same, you slap the bowl off the table. Stew goes everywhere and it clatters across the floor. 

Clyde bellows at you, and so you scream at him. You aren’t sure what you are saying, but you’re screaming, and then you kick the table and kick the chair and flee up the ladder. You slam the trapdoor down so hard the room shakes - you are sobbing now and your vision is blurred and wet - and you lock it. 

You decide that you will not come out until you are dead.

It will take awhile for you to die. You have food up here, bought in the General Store while Clyde was selling fur. The man in an apron behind the counter in the store was neat and tidy with a waxed moustache like a walrus. You asked for three loaves of bread and a pound of jerky. You do not like jerky but it will keep. You looked at the jars along the walls for a long time while he packed the bread and the jerky and tried to flirt with you.

You saw a jar labelled _ Lincoln’s Chocolate Creams. _It was full of sweets wrapped in special golden foil. You had only been gone from home for three or four months, but seeing candies felt very new after the winter. You asked for half a pound of those, half a pound of caramels, a jar of honey, a jar of strawberry jam, and four bars of rosy-pink soap. This would be expensive, but you had money.

The walrus man wrapped it all up in brown paper and put it in your basket. 

You will take a while to die. There is food and you can sneak out of the skylight to piss off the roof and drink snow. Chewie cries at the bottom of the ladder until you hear Clyde soothing him. You cry yourself to sleep.

Your plan to die does not take form. You are dragged to the town the next day - Clyde forcibly shrouds you in a coat made from the fur of something white and half-drags you out to the cart and sits you there like a child.

"I don't _ want _to go," you bark, and he dodges your hand when you go to slap him.

"And I don't want you runnin' off down the mountain and your daddy's people coming after _ me _when you turn up in fifty pieces. Now shut up."

You spit, clutching your satchel.

The road is rocky again. The dog lies on you, and in your head you call Clyde Logan a bastard fucker.

"Next time I go trappin'," he calls from the seat, "you're goin' with me. I need that dog, and if he won't leave you, you're goin' along."

"Fuck you," you mutter. The dog slobbers on your face.

"I heard that, you stubborn bitch."

You are made to take the dog by his rope leash and go with Clyde this time, trudging along behind him as he hauls bales of fur and a stack of antlers down the street. You don't bother, in the cold, to look at who he sells to, and when he pulls you into a low-roofed store with walls lined with writing implements, you look only at the dog and curse Clyde Logan in your head.

The man at the counter is familiar and obnoxiously English, with a terrible curled wig, and tells Clyde that a wolfskin he sold him housed a tick that made his dog expire of a fever.

"I believe I'm entitled to a refund, plus interest."

"I _ believe _," Clyde counters, "that you're full of shit."

"Don't take that tone with me, you mountain hick. I have pull in this town. I could have your furs told as bad as the plague."

_ You can help. You can talk around people better than Clyde can. He might let you go. _It does not occur to you, presently, that Clyde Logan is keeping you only so that you do not perish from the cold, and so you are spiteful and eager to be gone still.

** "** Ex _ cuse _ me," you interject, "but isn't this a limited company? And you're Maximilian Chilblain, correct?"

Both of them turn and look at you. The Englishman says, rudely, "And what about it?"

"If I recall, I saw your name in the news-paper the last time we came to town. You were done for extortion, isn't that right, Mister Chilblain?"

This is not a lie; you paid 8¢ for the news-paper and you sat on the car and read it while Clyde brought the fur to be sold. Maximilian Chilblain was fined $40 for extortion of the town haberdasher, from whom he had purchased cloth for binding his writing-books, and then claimed the material was ridden with a tick that killed his beloved hound. He was caught when the dog was found to be quite well. 

"You knew that Mister Logan wasn't quite given to taking the news-paper, didn't you, Mister Chilblain?" you ask gravely. _ You knew he could scarcely read and couldn't know, you bad-rugged prick. _

Chilblain looks between you both. "You have no idea what you're talking about," he say scornfully, and then to Clyde: "You ought to shut her mouth for her."

"You shut yours, you lyin' fuck.".

When the man goes silent, you go on, "Mister Logan is a tradesman of high repute, Mister Chilblain, and tradesmen of high repute have assets. Assets need protecting and, Mister Chilblain, I'm very sure you know that men hired for asset protection can be of very low repute indeed."

Chilblain swallows hard.. " French mercenaries," you rattle off. "German. Perhaps even Irish." Chilblain blanches. "You wouldn't like for Mister Logan's Irish mercenaries to discover that an _ Englishman _was foisting their respected employer out of his hard-earned money, would you, Mister Chilblain?" 

The lie comes easily; strict and overbearing parents made you an admirable liar.

"You're bluffing," Chilblain says, but you can see the fear settle behind his eyes.

"Am I?" you ask plainly. "Then, by all means, leave it to chance, Mister Chilblain. But I would invest in greater security, if I were you, in that case."

Maximilian Chilblain ultimately decides that Clyde's wolfskin did not give his dog a tick, and that he must have been simply mistaken, and shakily wishes you both a good day.

Clyde slams the store door behind him and urges you back to the cart. "How'd you do that?" he asks, then clarifies, _ "Why _'d you do that?"

"Bad business is bad for everyone," you tell him.

"Your Pa teach you how to do that?"

"I taught myself."

"Well," he says gruffly. "You didn't have to. He wouldn't have got a clipped cent outta me."

Your cheeks burn. "You're _ welcome _," you say, piggishly, and climb into the cart and do not look at him for the entire trip home.

It begins to snow when you tramp into the house, race into the loft. You watch it from the skylight, eyes welling up. You tried to help, you _ did _ help, and all he had to say was _ yew didn't have tew. He wouldn'da got a clipped ceant outta mey. _

You drift off and wake up when it's dark, still in your clothes and your boots. You can smell food cooking, coffee brewing, and spitefully undress and sip water and nibble at jerky.

Clyde calls your name. You ignore him, and he calls again, below the ledge of the loft. You feel the _ clunk _ of a foot on the ladder and you blurt, “Don’t you _ dare. _” You’re in nothing but your nightgown. It’d make you feel vulnerable – unarmoured. The thought of him looming over you in the loft with nothing between you but a linen shift makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.

“Don’t I dare _ what _ ? This is _ my _damn-“

“Don’t you _ dare!” _ you snap. “I’m not even dressed!” You pull yourself to the edge and glare down at him. He still has that great dark coat on, shoulders dusted with snow. There’s a package under his arm, wrapped with brown paper and tied with string.

“I don’t want it,” you say, before he can speak.

“You don’t even know what it is yet.”

“I don’t _ care. _I don’t want it. Go away.”

He stares at you a moment, and then his jaw goes taut and he lurches upwards. “Jesus _ Christ, _ ” you exclaim, squirming backwards onto the bed, pulling the blankets around yourself as though they could protect you from anything. “You really _ are _ stupid, aren’t you? And _ deaf _!”

Clyde slaps the package onto the floor of the loft, his lower half on the ladder. You put your foot out as though to kick him, and he catches your ankle deftly. It’s like a game now – you’ve done this so many times it’s beginning to feel stupid. You tell him to get off even so, struggling.

“I don’t _ want _it,” you bellow.

“Listen to me, you mule bitch,” Clyde snaps. You kick him, but it doesn’t move him a bit. “Stop. Listen to me."

You go still with your heel dug deep into his shoulder, like a pony’s flank. The bareness of your foot and calf dawns on you.

“Winter ain’t gon’ be short, you hear me? We got months left. If you keep actin’ like a brat – for no reason – we gon’ drive each other insane.”

“_ And _?” you ask him, petulant. He exhales hard through his nose and his breath is hot on your leg.

“You think maybe you could _ not _ act like a brat?” he asks, and though his words are sharp, his voice is softer. You don’t know if you like it. “Then you can go home come springtime and act like as much of a brat as you want – _ to someone else. _”

Going home is not an option, but neither is staying here, though at least thus far the latter has not forced you into marriage.

“Fine,” you say curtly.

Clyde watches you. “Is that ‘fine, I won’t act like a brat’ or ‘fine, I’ll say yes but I’m gon’ go right back to actin’ like a brat the second I don’t get my own way’?”

You draw yourself up, red. “I want to go to bed.”

Clyde sighs and pushes the package towards you. He cuts you off before you can bark that you don’t want it. 

"This is for you, for earlier." He seems to struggle with the words. "You, uh - you did a good thing, chewin' him out like that."

"You said I didn't _ have _to," you say bitterly.

"And I had two'n half hours home to think about it. Stop bein’ a brat,” he says wearily, and disappears down the ladder. It takes every ounce of resolve in you not to hit the package with a flying kick and send it shooting down on top of him.

You lie there seething for an eternity. I must be past midnight when you hear water sloshing below. There is scratching and whimpering at the foot of the ladder. 

"She's asleep, fool dog," you hear Clyde tell it. "Go on now, go to bed. _ Bed, _Chewie." 

You peer over the loft door. The dog is prostrate at the end of the bed. The great tin tub that sat in the corner has been carried before the fire, and Clyde Logan is filling it. You are filled with jealousy at the sight. You are clean, but you wash yourself in the snow, frozen and bitter, because you would rather die in it than undress while he is anywhere near you - while _ any _ man is near you. 

When he begins to undress, you feel a sort of abrupt rage, an indignance at the _ audacity _ of him to disrobe with you in the high cabin.

You don't look away even so.

He unbuttons the dark vest, the linen shirt, takes them off. His skin is darker in the dimmer light, and he's _ hairy. _ You've never seen anything like it before; you've never seen a naked man before. There is coarse dark hair on his arms and his chest and his belly. His back is broad and his shoulders broader. _ Like a buffalo. _He undoes his britches and sheds his smalls and-

_ Jesus. _

You roll onto your back and look up at the skylight, heart hammering. It feels like something you should not have seen. _ Lord. _ You snatch up the package to distract yourself and pull the string free, unfold the paper quietly.

It's a set of pencils in a buckskin sleeve, a deep, square tin of toffees with an embossed bestiary's print of a British seabird, and a soft-covered book with a black printed title: **_The Adventures of Tom Sawyer_**, by Mark Twain. 

Water shifts softly below. You watch steam rise into the rafters, and turn your head to look, through the skylight, at the snowy stars.


	2. Bootheel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second Dream Playlist (I can't embed links to save my life): https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5dR9QbeNti9d9haqqTzMAb?si=KB00SW7eREuri9I-BEIMjA
> 
> Following text is NSFW. Obviously.

Clyde Logan has never been married, but he’s known women in _ that sort of way. _

One was a dark-eyed Cherokee girl with an Irish mother; a trapper in her own right, supporting herself trapping and skinning on her own steam, careful to steer clear of the company men. Clyde grew close to her - in relative terms - in the fragile spring of 1887, when he ; a closeness that culminated in rushed weekly couplings by the river. The trapper girl never told him her name, though he asked often, and so he called her Brown-Eyes, and Brown-Eyes refused to lay with him: _What do I look like, an idiot? _she asked. _I don’t want babies with _**_you._** Plenty of men would insist, but Clyde never did. That sort of thing made him real uneasy, sick to his stomach in an ugly kind of way. He made do with what she _did_ want; his head between her legs for as long as she could stand it. He often felt a fool riding to the river, week after week, but he went anyway, because it was just about all he wanted, too. 

The other was an older woman - a _ lady, _ Clyde is sure she would insist - with red curls piled up neatly on her head, and one of those ridiculous little fascinator hats pinned up on top of it. She had money, and it showed on what she wore, from fitted brocade jacket and white kid gloves, right down to the sharp-toed black boots that peeked from under her high-bustled skirts. She always purred _ Good morning, Mister Logan _ when she came with her husband, a fat puce man that always asked about bobcat furs but always purchased beaver. Clyde always said _ Good morning, ma'am _ and _ I'll keep an eye out for 'em, sir _, and watched them go on their way. She always turned back, looking at him from under her eyelashes. Clyde never looked back, abashed, but felt her green eyes on him even so. She made Clyde feel a whore, though he wasn’t sure he cared; she demanded he fuck her against the creaking wooden back wall of the marshal’s office whenever she could get him there alone, day or night. She never did mention babies, and she didn’t seem to care for her husband, either. 

There were other women here and there; the German with the _ longest _yellow hair Clyde had ever seen that insisted he pull it when they lay down together; a sharp-featured woman with eyes like flint that Clyde was sure was some kind of federal spy on account of her persistent interest in his trading, even when he was inside her; another trapper’s timid-looking wife that took great delight in smacking him in the face as she sat on top of him. 

Clyde loved that. He isn't one of the men one reads about in the penny gazettes, lewd and simpering under a wife's boot, but he _ loves _ bratty girls. He likes the bratty ones that like having the brat fucked vigorously out of them; buttocks smacked, shoulders nipped, all of it. 

Clyde didn’t - and doesn’t - much care for the way others strayed from their marriages; as far as he was concerned, they sought him out, not otherwise, and if other men couldn’t keep their wives happy abed, then it was nearly his _ duty _to do so in the short time he knew them for. 

\-------------------

Clyde Logan likes bratty girls, but he isn't sure what to do with _ you _ at all, and you're the worst brat he's ever come across in his life.

He offers to take you home. The reward posters are cropping up like mildew, town and outpost both, and he can tell by the shadow of your face when you see them - and the men that stop and peer at them - that they make you uneasy. 

He offers even so.

You eat what he gives you, for once - a day of tantrums has made you hungry for something more substantial than caramels - while it snows and darkens beyond the walls. Clyde sits at the table and you sit at the rug, swaddled like a babe. Chewie leans on you, pretending not to look at your food.

"I don't want to go home," you say, shovelling stew into your mouth, too hungry to be self-conscious, and stare at the fire.

Clyde shifts uncomfortably. "You said you wanted to go. You ran away."

"I ran away from _ home, _too," you say defensively. 

"And why did you do that?"

"Didn't want to get married."

"_ Married _? Oh, that poor fool-"

"You shut your mouth, hick."

"So you don't wanna go home. You don't wanna stay here. What _ do _you want?"

In as diplomatic a tone as you can muster, you say, "I suppose _ here _is preferable to that. At least until I can figure out what I'm to do."

Clyde swallows. He'll keep those thoughts to himself. "What do you think this is - a boardin' house?"

"I'll pay you, if that's what you're implying, you fat fuck."

"I don't want your money, girl."

"Then you'll have to put up with me until the spring. Because I'm not going home."

_ Not going home. _

He could learn to take that, he thinks. You are deeply unpleasant and horribly spoilt, but he could learn to tolerate it. An errant and well-smothered thought emerges in his mind: could he learn to enjoy it?

_ Give that up, you great fool, _ he tells himself up. ** _One _ ** _ brat with a pouting face and already you're yearnin' on her like a dog. Idiot. _

"So you want to be hid."

"I suppose."

"Then you ain't settin' another foot in that town."

You turn and look at him so fiercely that he wonders if the buttons would fly off his britches for the sudden swell of his cock. _ Jesus lord. _

"Then what am I supposed to do for three - nearly _ four _months?"

"Work."

"You're a cunt."

"Maybe."

It snows and snows. Clyde thinks about what to do. _ Can I? _ he thinks. _ Can I hide her? _ If your father is as well-heeled as the **$100 REWARD **posters lead him to believe, then no doubt there'll be men out hunting the woods for you. 

Clyde could lose one hundred dollars quite comfortably. Some people call trapping lucrative, and it is. He sets his jaw and looks out the window. He'll hide you; only til spring.

_ Only _til spring.

\-----------

He notices your journal properly four days after the strange agreement is made. He found it blank in an old box and gave it to you, and he has seen it before now, tucked under your arm, and though you hole yourself up in your nook more often than not, you occasionally sit below by the fire and scribble in it. 

You have a tantrum over something small and storm up to your nook. They tire you, he supposes, tantrums - because ten minutes later he hears you snuffle and snore. It is only when he is sitting in his great chair that he realises that your journal, open and facing down where you flung it, is six inches from his foot.

Clyde knows he shouldn't. But he does.

_ January the twenty-first, eighteen-eighty-nine. To-day I saw another mountain lion from my window. I am starting to hate the sight of them even if I did like them at first. They worry the horse and put Clyde Logan in a sour mood. I saw him bathe the day before yester-day. I do believe I have never seen a man so quite like a buffalo before. Here is a picture I drew of the snowdrop the dog brought me this morning. He's a very good dog and I'll be sick to leave him come spring. _

He can't read it so well, but poring over it for nearly three-quarters-of-an-hour provides _ some _ semblance of clarity.He focuses on _ I saw him bathe, _and despite himself is quite embarrassed for having had the audacity to bare his particulars in his own home. The entry does not indicate pleasure or disgust either way at the notion of his bathing, and leaves him concerned. 

The next mountain lion he shoots, he skins and tans for something to do, and tries _ not _ to be sour.

\----------------------

It snows and snows. You need - and want - new boots.

When you ran, you brought kid boots - worthless things - and your clasping purse and five hundred dollars, stolen from Papa's bureau. More than enough for new boots, and more than enough to take you across the Atlantic when spring comes.

_ When _spring comes. The midwinter is long and white and seems to last even longer in the mountains, where the air is thin and the sun slanted so that the snow will not melt.

It's warm in here at least; there are blankets and furs and a fire going day and night, and the dog is warmer still. You suspect Clyde Logan's bed, facing the fire, is even warmer, but you say nothing, and seethe.

You sit at the table and scowl at your kid boots. Clyde is sewing like a washwife in his great chair, affixing the lion's pelt to a linen lining. 

"You come over here and measure yourself, girl," you hear him say.

"For _ what _?"

"This." He holds up the pelt and the printed tape-measure. "Ridin'-jacket. That coat ain't gon' keep you from the ice by itself."

"No."

"Then it won't fit right."

"Good."

He grunts.

You say, "I need new boots."

"You wore out the soles of them fuckin' dress-up boots, then?"

"You're a cunt."

"Right. Where do you expect to get boots made?"

"There was a cobbler in that town, I saw it."

He looks at you, dark eyes hard. "And do you see the snow stacking up two feet against the wall, too?"

"It won't be hard to get the cart through it."

Clyde Logan huffs - a laugh. "Forget it."

You say, “Well, then, I’ll just have to go and get them myself. In the cold. On my own.”

“You go on and you do that then, you goddamn bitch. Don't come cryin' to me when you got a mountain lion's claws hangin' out your face."

You almost would, if only for what he's said. Often you have sat in the loft and watched, from the tiny window, as the long brown cats stalked about, dewclaw-deep in the snow. They're beautiful in a frightening sort of way; they have beautiful green eyes and white bellies and pink noses. They're almost sweet.

You've seen Clyde blow the green eyes out of their heads, too.

_ Almost _ sweet _ . _

"Then you _ ought _ to take me. I won't be worth anything to anyone without a face."

He looks quite as if he wants to tell you that you're worth nothing _ with _a face, and you put up your chin and dare him silently to say it, but he doesn't.

"_ Forget _ about it. I'm not takin' you anywhere in this fuckin' snow. Now shut up."

"I'll kill you," you tell him.

"Yeah, you do that."

"I will. Everyone has to sleep sometime. I'll kill you while you sleep."

You don't kill him while he sleeps, though you would like to. You complain and gripe until he gives in for his own sanity. He takes you to town when the snow gives up, three days later.

Clyde goes to the general store, you steal to the cobbler's shop, and your clothes speak louder than your words. Immediately the cobbler - a balding man in a crafter's apron - is at your beck and call. 

"Boots," he repeats. "Well, you're in the right place."

His lanky, pigtailed shop assistant measures your feet, your ankles, your calves. She says, "Why, excuse my insolence, but you have the _ daintiest _little feet, miss. Look, Pa. Those ridin' heels in the window would fit her just fine."

You saw the boots before you came in; buttery dark leather, buffed shiny, with an inch-and-a-half heel and a hefty sole, laced up over the ankle.

The cobbler asks, "Where are you livin', miss?"

"Somewhere ugly. I need a pretty pair of boots to distract me. Those ones in the window are perfect."

They fit perfect, too. You feel like a strange sort of Cinderella. Your foot fits snugly into the silky inside and the laces go firm up your ankles. 

Spite and delight run through you like a heavy river. "These," you breathe. "These are perfect."

For four dollars and seventeen cents, they're as close as you'll get.

Clyde doesn't notice all the way home. He doesn't notice you clacking your heels together on the cart, beaming at your booted feet. He doesn't notice your old kid boots discarded in the pack.

He notices the _ click-click-click _of the new boots on the wood floor when you strut purposefully across it with your sweet bag, an hour after the door is closed behind you both.

“Where in the _ hell _ did you get those damn boots?”

You preen. “In town.”

You gon’ snap an ankle in them things.”

Primly, you say, “I’ll snap your neck,” and stuff your mouth with fudge.

It carries on much like this. Clyde loves to be practical, and you love to spite him. You do wobble - you'll get used to the heel - but the _ click-click-click _and the wobbling eventually get to him, and he demands that you take them off. It is night, and you are being loud. Chewie has been let out to toilet, and you can hear him crunching about in the snow.

"I'm well able to walk in these, you - you _ prick. _"

"Like hell you are. You gon' break a fuckin' ankle, and then who's gonna have to haul your whinin' ass around?"

"_ You _ can do it," you say spitefully. "You fucking _ pig _. I can wear what I like."

"Listen to me, you brat," he barks. "You want hidin', you'll be hid, but I ain't your fuckin' butler, and so you gon' take those fuckin' things off _ right now _ or you can tramp around the snow in your bare feet."

You slap him so hard it stings your hand. The dog snuffles, but does not wake.

You are clawing at him then, dragging his face down to yours.

Idly, you wonder - _ why have I done that? _ The bath? The strange daydreams of Clyde Logan's buffalo's back and coarse chest? 

He paws at you as well. His beard is rough under your hands, so you pull at it for its insolence, and he growls into your mouth like a dog. 

Your back hits the wooden column. Clyde drops, as if he has been kicked, and for a moment you think _ did I kick him? _He fusses with your skirts instead, yanks at your delicates, and very suddenly, kneeling like a monk, hefts your thigh over his shoulder and thrusts his face unceremoniously between your legs.

Immediately, you think to scream. But you only gasp. "How dare you," you say, but do not struggle. You pull at his hair instead. You can feel the coarseness of his beard and the persistence of his tongue even between your legs. The one leg supporting you begins to tremble. He grips your thigh so tightly that you are sure it will bruise.

You arch your back, lay it flat again. The wood against it shocks you back to sound mindedness. Your sharp intake of breath seems to sober Clyde, and he draws back.

"You - you _ pig _ ," you gasp. "You _ dog. _You - you - I can't quite believe you'd-"

You bolt, undergarments slipping down your ankle.

He calls your name, and then: "Shit. Fuck."

You are up the ladder and slam the trapdoor shut before he can even rise up off the ground. "Fuck," you hear him groan. "Shit, shit, shit."

Shaky as a foal, you drag your bedside locker over the trapdoor and sit there, shaking. _ What on earth what the fuck shitshitshitshitshit. _ He licked you - there! Like an animal - and you did not move. Surely that was illegal - somewhere - and yet - and _ yet- _

Knocking coming from under your behind makes you jump. Clyde says your name through the wood.

"Don't you dare," you snap. 

"Jesus - I'm sorry. I shouldn't have - I thought you wanted to, I - I should have asked-"

"Yes, you should have!"

"I'm sorry. Fuck, I -" Muffled, he says, "I didn't mean to be so - so _ impertinent. _I didn't mean to scare you."

"Scared!" you exclaim.

You shove the locker aside and fling open the trapdoor with as much grace as you can muster and still manage to scrap your hand on it. The abruptness nearly sends Clyde flying down the steps.

"Lord Jesus, will you be _ careful-" _

"Scared!" you repeat. "You did not _ scare _ me, Mister Logan - _ quite _the opposite."

"Will you quit that _ Mister Logan _ guff, for Christ's sake - I didn't _ want _you to be scared-"

You are sure you look a sight in your booted feet, face scarlet and hair all askew, delicates around your ankles, but you stare him down even so. 

"I wasn't scared. I was just - taken aback. _ There _, I was taken aback." 

He goes to take hold of your dangling calf and thinks better of it. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," you say, though you tremble still.

"Did I hurt you?"

You look at the hulking idiot and his great dark eyes. "No. I would have said. I was just _ taken aback. _"

He pauses. 

"Did you - did you mind it? _ Like _it, I mean."

You flush even redder. "I wasn't averse."

Neither of you speak for a moment. Chewie paws at the door to come in, done with his exploring.

"You can-" He clears his throat. "You can come on down here and sleep in the big bed - if you want."

He sees your face and blurts, "I won't touch you."

"I - well." _ He'll be warm - it was so warm, and so deep. _"I might. If you touch me, I'll - I'll-"

"Kill me in my sleep. I know. I won't touch you."

You put on your night-dress and go. The dog is let in and nearly knocks you over. His fur is cold and crisp and his paws are packed with snow. Clyde asks you, tentatively, if you would mind terribly what he wears to bed. 

"You can wear whatever you like," you say, quite coolly. "It's your bed."

He sighs. "I don't want you to be - to be … _ disquieted _."

"It would take far more than your bare chest to disquiet me, Mister Logan."

"Fine. And shut up calling me _ Mister Logan, _I said. You call me my name and I'll call you yours."

"Fine. Longjohns are ugly," you say, and climb into bed.

Overjoyed to see you still, Chewie tries to climb into the bed with you both. 

He is a welcome barrier at first; he tries his hardest to nestle into the little hollow between Clyde's body and yours, but he is far too big, and so settles for sprawling bodily across you both.

"You see," you whisper. "He'll eat you if you touch me."

You're both smiling in the dying light. Clyde laughs.

"I won't touch you til you tell me I can."

"I didn't tell you that you could kiss me _ there _, but you did."

"Call it an error of judgement."

"I'll take that."

Chewie snores. The bed is so warm it nearly swallows you up. Your eyes feel heavy.

"Goodnight, Clyde."

"'Night, darlin'."

  
  


\-------------------------------------------

  
  


You insist on wearing your boots to town. Clyde huffs and sighs, but he's soft on you. He needs tools. You need sweets - and you need a _ diaphragm. _

You thought on it at great length. Eventually, you surmised, you might regret not having it on hand. It has already become clear just how quickly things happen and change.

Apothecaries have them, but never openly. You find this quite clear; when you go there, shopping-basket full of sweets, the carroty, bespectacled man behind the counter goes as still as the brown glass bottles surrounding you both.

"Sir?" you ask, face aflame. "Is something wrong?"

The apothecarist peers at you, appalled in pious mockery, but when you show him the wad of notes in your purse, he makes his appalled way to the supply closet and returns with a meek little box the size and shape of a powder compact.

"Ninety-two cents," he says curtly.

_ Ninety-two cents! _you think, but pay him, and say nothing. You put the box in your purse. You thank him and he does not respond. He must think you a whore. You don't care. You go to the stationers and buy a moleskin and a book of Greatest Mysteries.

Clyde is waiting by the cart. "Where did you get to?"

You show him your sweets, your wrapped moleskine, your new book. 

"You're spoilt," he says, but he says it affectionately.

"I know."

You lean on him on the way home.

It takes five days to break in the boots properly. You sleep in his bed. He does not touch you. On the fifth day, you both start a fight over the boots the moment you come in the door. The heel catches on the threshold and sends you flying. 

Clyde catches you before you bruise yourself. "_ What _did I tell you?" he demands. "You're gonna break your damn neck in those things."

"They're _ fine _," you snap. You're red, but not because of the fire. 

He seems to seethe, but at the boots, not at you.

"Take 'em off," he demands. It is so sudden and so sharp that you pause where you are stomping determinedly across the room. 

"I beg your pardon?"

"The boots. Take 'em off."

"I will do no such thing," you exclaim, appalled.

"Take those boots off, or I'll take 'em off for you, girl."

It is a threat and _ girl _ an expletive, but most threats do not inspire heat between your legs and most expletives do not invite the idea of more of what he did before.

Slowly, you draw up your skirt and stubbornly stick out one leg like a fat toddler, boot and stocking and girdle exposed. His cheeks flush scarlet, and his chest fills up with hot and curious breath.

"Take them off, then," you dare him. "You want to dress me and undress me like a doll, then do it, you - pig."

He does.

You are put bodily onto the bed and you delight in seeing how the delicate laces challenge him. You lay your legs up his clothed chest - the heat of it baffles you - and one by one he tears the boots away and flings them far from the bed. 

_ Oh, _ you think. _ Oh, we _ ** _are._ **

The diaphragm is - well, _ in. _ You read the tiny pamplet and lay spreadeagled and unladylike in your bed to _ put _it in. It took three tries, but you managed, and now you can't feel it at all unless it's been in for too long.

You don't know if he will fuck you, and you don't know if he'll notice. You don't care.

You are hefted up and onto your hands and knees, and like some sort of beast he grips your behind and licks at you there, as if he means to bury his face, nose and tongue first, into you.

You can tolerate beasts; this one in particular.

\-----------------------------------------------

_ Brat, _ he thinks. _ Stuck-up spoilt little bitch. _He wants to throw those boots into the fire, though he has already torn them from your feet and flung them across the room. 

He wonders if he is imagining the ache of his jaw. He licks and licks like some crazed maddened thing, and rather thinks that he is; once he has started, it feels impossible to stop. He would listen to your huffs and grunts and nothing else.

He wonders, if you were wearing the boots, would you dig the heels sharply into his flanks or his neck or wherever he held your legs? Surely you would - you’re _ spoilt, _ given to slapping and pinching and screeching like a haint - and he is sure that he would rise up and snap at you _ not _to, and then feel terrible about it after the fact.

The log he shoved into the fire is still wedged between chimney-breast and grate and is beginning to glow. It is warm and dim here. You are sheened with sweat both, and Clyde leans into how you sharply tug his hair when he laves at your exposed neck. 

He knows he must be careful with your clothes. You are spoilt and you do not, like some women, find any sort of pleasure in stockings torn in the throes of passion or brassieres and girdles split by eager, seeking hands. It is a sort of challenge in its own to undress you like a doll, to fold the clothes or be pinched.

He must be careful with you as well. It is clear from the flash of momentary terror on your face when your nethers are bared to his that you are simply not used to this. He will not ask if you have done this before, because he is sure he knows the answer. 

"You wanna stop?" he breathes.

"No," you huff, ever determined. You're wet, swollen - ready, but being ready bodily is different to being ready in one's mine. 

You insist. Clyde goes easy; inch by inch, gently-gently-_ gently _. You breathe and puff and make soft sounds, but you tell him there's not much pain.

"Like a bee-sting," you breathe.

He stills. "I don't want you hurtin'."

"Good."

_ January the twenty-ninth, eighteen-eighty-nine. To-day I bought a pair of boots at market. The bastard says he is going to burn them. I hate him and I hope he burns in Hell. _He read the passage when you fell asleep in the evening and immediately felt like a dog. 

When you are ready for more weight, more rhythm, you play at your games with him. You will not be kissed - you ignore the fullness and talk at him - you refuse to come. This infuriates him.

“You gotta come for me, doll,” he grunts now. He knows that you won’t now that you have realised it ires him- or that you will try very hard not to - but _ he _must try, too, or else he will think himself a failure. You will not even lie upon your back and have him atop of you, and so he knows you’re angry - just not angry enough to push him away. 

You make an indignant sound, and Clyde lays his head between the jutting blades of your shoulders.

“Try,” he huffs, as though you _ can’t _. “Try to come for me, sweetheart.” 

“_ No _,” you bite out, but when he puts his weight down on you, belly against your bare back, you give in, and you don’t scratch his hand or struggle and curse when you feel the heat of his great paw between your legs.

When you are limp and full of seed and when Clyde can scarcely keep his eyes open, he cradles you and mumbles, half-asleep, “I’m still gon’ burn those damn boots.”

He is jolted awake by your sharp nails digging into his chest. “No!” you exclaim, jerking upwards, and when you make to vault yourself over his body to protect the precious things, he pulls you back and holds you while you curse and scratch.

“Stop it. _ Stop. _ Don’t you dare, you cheeky get - _ don’t!” _

“If you burn them I’ll - I’ll -” Your eyes dart about the dim room. “I’ll burn this place to the ground. I will!”

“Promise,” he says, and he can see that you are resisting the urge to pinch him hard, the way a child would. “Promise me you won’t. You gon’ hurt yourself if you wear ‘em.”

“I don’t care.”

“Why’re you so damn stubborn?”

“They’re _ mine. _I want to wear them.”

Clyde compromises. “I’ll git you a new pair, pretty ones - with no heel.”

“I don’t _ want _new o-”

"Listen," he interrupts. "Don't argue with me, girl. Just for tonight."

You grumble. Clyde kisses your ear, and then stills, as if remembering something. He draws back the blanket, looks at your belly quite pointedly, and says, "We gon' have to take you to a-"

"That won't be necessary."

"No?"

"No." You sink under the covers a little and murmur, "I have a diaphragm."

"You what?"

"I have a _ diaphragm, _" you say, louder.

There is silence.

"Oh," he huffs. "I didn't know. Well. It's a good thing to have. Useful, I mean."

"Yes, useful."

You lie in silence for a moment. 

Clyde asks, "Why do you have it?"

"Well. When we had our … our _ exchange, _last week, I thought it'd be good to be prepared for every eventuality."

"Every eventuality," he echoes, laying a hand flat on your thigh. "Every eventuality bein' _ this _?"

"I suppose so," you say, going red.

He chuckles.

"I think I'm going to go to sleep."

"Stay here."

"I will." You roll over. "Goodnight."

"'Night, sweetheart."

When you are very nearly asleep, he shifts your blanket up over your shoulders, presses his belly to your back, kisses the top of your head, and snores.

It snows and snows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, sorry for the loooong hiatus. There was a death in my family and I went back to uni and everything has been A Lot. Hopefully this update kicks me back into geara
> 
> Tumblr: @hagenshall  
Twitter: @badselkie (made just to peep)
> 
> Happy reading!

**Author's Note:**

> I KNOW Clyde is a lil mean here - this, too, shall pass.
> 
> Thanks for reading! I love to interact with readers so if you wanna hit me up you can get me at:
> 
> Twitter @hagenshull (with a U)  
Tumblr @hagenshall (with an A)
> 
> xx B


End file.
